Void.

The dreams began three months ago. They where sporadic at first, one a week, nothing for a fortnight, three nights in a row... but as the nights went by they settled to a pattern. By the second month, they were coming every other night. Another two weeks later and every night was invaded by the dreams, by the nightmares.

They change a little every night, but the basic premise is always the same. It begins with the darkness, the endless, infinite void. There isn’t even nothing, there’s just... null. Then there is something. Just a point, a single mathematical point, infinitely small, yet still existent. It grows to a point of light, and draws in the nothing, destroying it and replacing it with brightness.

From the brightness, stars and planets form, great cities rise on the planets, and thousands of buildings, miles high rise from the surfaces of verdant worlds, littered with great civilizations and cultures. The light burns brighter and brighter, a beacon seen throughout all of creation.

But the brighter the light, the bolder the shadow. The shadows become more than the absence of light. The shadows become the absence of anything, and the shadows deepen and broaden, beyond the confines of the areas stolen of light.

The dreams are vivid, and the void slowly swells and grows, the unnatural nothing consuming everything. The great cyclopean towers fall, the great cultures vanish, the worlds are covered in a dark blanket, and soon, before long the stars themselves are snuffed out like spent candles. The holes, the patches of nothingness spread, like an unseen hand is pulling at the very threads of creation, the fabric slowly unravelling. There are no screams, there is no panic.

Even the most terrifying objects in the universe seem to be completely oblivious to the cleansing abyss that slowly devours everything. Suns, moons, planets, black holes, constellations, galaxies, clusters, everything, great and small, single or conglomerate, is claimed by the never ending cascade of simple, basic absence.

The dreams show me something, a simple fact that we all know, yet do not acknowledge. That the light is not eternal, that the light can only drive away the void, and that the only thing that is eternal is nothing. From nothing, everything arose, and back to nothing shall everything return. And when this cycle is complete- the void shall remain, unchanged, unfeeling, unrelenting.

The dreams do not stop there. For even as the galaxies themselves are claimed by the never ending collapse, the spaces between them, space itself, what we had the audacity to call ‘the void’, is also slowly consumed. The abyss is not simply the absence of matter, it is the absence of anything, the absence of the very fabric of creation, something more elementary that the atom, than the quark, than electromagnetism. Something so basic, so simple that without it the world simply falls apart.

Somewhere, there is a loose thread, somewhere there was a strand left hanging in the great tapestry. The dreams hurt. They hurt so badly. I can’t sleep, I can’t bear to watch the void any longer. The very concept of a true, absolute nothing is driving me insane. There is no darkness, nor is there light, there is no cold or hot, there is no sound, or lack thereof. The void is what I can see of the back of my head. It is impossible for the human mind to conceive of, yet it has been forced into my skull by powers unknown. Someone pulled at the loose thread. It hurts me, but the ideas will never end. They pulled and the tapestry began to unravel.

What happened was not the release of an ancient force, of evil or of destruction, but a simple chain reaction returning everything to nothing. Slow, long degeneration. A slow, lingering death, neither painful nor honourable, a death that was not even noticed by those who were dying. They are zombies, the living dead, wandering their ruined achievements, unknowing of the fact they are already doomed.

And the dreams are coming to me when I’m awake now. I can see them, I can see the threads, the binding of the world itself. And sometimes I see a loose thread, and I know that all it would take is one hard pull at the right place at the right time, and the entire fabric would fall apart, leaving nothing but nothing to replace it. The light is fragile, and every day it grows dimmer. I can see the patches, the holes the start of the disintegration already, holes that no one but me can see, and they are growing. And people are vanishing, and no one but me can see them. It will all end soon, and the dreams are painful.

I will not see it end this way, I’d rather tear myself off the tapestry than fade to nothing. That’s why I have this gun. And soon, soon it will all be over. No more dreams, and I can escape the void. The emptiness is coming. Nothing will be spared. I’d ask God to have mercy on your souls, but not even He, or your souls are exempt from the abyss. Death itself has met its end, and... to hell with this.

Notes added by detective inspector Barnes:
Fifth suicide this week. Something is very wrong, and I get the impression that while this guy was not cogent, this was more than simple psychosis.